Recently, I read a book for book club: Kissing Doorknobs by Terry Spencer Hesser. It's about a young girl who suffers with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It's a really touching story that makes you realize how very hard it would be to deal with something like that and overcome it.
While I definitely do not have OCD, reading this book reminded me of the slightly obsessive tendencies that I do have... Checking to make sure doors are locked every night, to the point that I have to look at the door lock straight on and "visualize" the door locked. Checking several times to make sure the garage door is down when I leave. Going back to make sure I've locked the front doors. Making sure my children are breathing every night, to the point that I have to stand there, with my hand on their chests and feel the rise and fall of their breathing. Perhaps I'm guilty of nudging them to make them move so I don't have to wonder. Perhaps.
Some of this is probably typical Mom stuff, but I also remember checking doors and things when I was a kid (especially if my mom was gone for the night cause I worried my dad wouldn't do it). I also remember that when I said my nightly prayers, if one of my family members was still not home, I had to pray that they would get home safely. If I forgot, I'd get out of bed and say another prayer. I was convinced that if I didn't pray, they wouldn't get home ok. Nice burden for a kid, don't you think?
These tendencies haven't been helped by the trenches in my basement (and no, I'm not posting another picture. It's just too depressing.) Every few hours, I have to go down and check the basement bathroom and the furnace room to make sure we haven't had another back-up. The vision of what I found in there last Saturday is still too present in my mind. This isn't made easier by plumbers telling us we can use our system until everything's fixed, but "take short showers. Don't flush unless you go #2, and don't use your disposal." I'm constantly worried that one of the kids will flush too much toilet paper down. Or, flush in the middle of the night and we won't know there's a problem until we wake up in the morning. And I wonder why I don't sleep well these days.
In good news (comparatively speaking), they've almost uncovered the whole pipe system in the basement and hope to have everything fixed and back to normal in the next week. We'll see. :)
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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3 comments:
I do agree some of it is just being a mom but I'm with you on if I don't look at something straight on and almost say out loud, "curling iron is off" then for whatever reason I will forget if I turned it off or not. Our minds do tricky things. Too bad your mind can't just forget about the basement for awhile!
Wow- aside from all the craziness, your house is beatiful! Heather
I am the same way. The worst is at our shed, or when I know we are going to be gone for all day. The kids get so mad when we have to turn around just to make sure....I full on nudge my kids if I can't tell if they are breathing. Once when M was a baby, I practically stripped her naked and beat her in the mall because she was so still I just couldn't tell.
Sorry about your basement, I hope all fixes itself!
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